But with the Games now underway, we can gladly move past the “are they ready?” story — which admittedly has been much more absurd than some previous Games — and start to concentrate on the athletic stories that actually matter.

This is CBC’s big return to an event they’ve excelled at in the past, and it will interesting to see if they can return to form. The big question will be whether the public broadcaster, in these days of budget cuts and bad news, can rekindle that flame and once again demonstrate its relevance.

The all-out coverage number are staggering, with over 1,500 hours of live coverage spread across CBC and its partners, TSN, TSN2 (which has a hockey focus), Sportsnet and Sportsnet ONE (curling), in addition to online and mobile accessibility.

“No one gets to redefine expectations. The world has moved to a place where social media is just an expectation, streaming is an expectation,” says Chris Irwin, co-executive producer of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, on the phone from Sochi.

“You don’t decide whether you are going to do some of it, or delay it. Everyone needs to see what they want, when they want. Anything other than all of it is something that draws attention.”

He is absolutely correct, as evidenced by the outcry in the U.S. over NBC’s decision not to stream Friday’s opening ceremonies, instead broadcasting them on tape delay.

These will be the first iPad Winter Games, Irwin adds, with CBC’s app set to draw plenty of eyeballs. But the streaming on the CBC’s website has a few bugs thus far, and fizzled out a few times for me — after successfully showing me pre-roll ads, naturally.

It’s unlikely the system has been overwhelmed this early, but it’s an ominous sign, given that the nation’s bandwidth will get a healthy workout once the hockey competition starts. Here’s hoping that just like all of the early kinks in Sochi, the first’s day bumpiness is going to be worked out.

But as we said, now that the competition has begun, here are five big things we’re looking forward to at these Olympics.

It’s all about expectations: Remember the old saying about under-promising and over-delivering? Well, all of the tweets about shoddy hotel rooms and unprepared venues could be straight out of a “lowering expectations” playbook, giving Mother Russia a chance to shine if the events go off without a hitch.

Conversely, coming off of Canada’s outstanding medal showing at Vancouver 2010, our Olympians will face disappointment if they don’t match or exceed those results.

“One thing I will say is that (the) Games experience the people have is absolutely tied to how Canada performs,” says Irwin. “People remember the Vancouver Games because Canadian athletes succeeded.”

Get ready for lunch time hockey: It goes without saying that how the Canadian’s men’s hockey team does has an outsized role in how we will feel about the Olympics. But they’re also likely to create a huge productivity black hole, as the majority of the team’s games start at noon, Toronto time. That will mean people watching online at their desks, or heading out for extra-long lunches.

Irwin credits the IOC and schedulers for moving several events into the night in Sochi, which is nine hours ahead of us, putting them in a prime midday slot here in the Eastern time zone.

Curling fans might need to switch the beer for coffee: Curling is ratings gold in Canada — this time out, it is scheduled for three draws a day, alternating between men’s and women’s competitions, with matches start at midnight, at 5 a.m. and 10 a.m.

“Those games are actually played out over the night, and that’s (where) we start most of our Olympic overnight programming at midnight, with a curling draw,” says Irwin. “We think that there will be lots of exposure for it and with our partners, TSN and Sportsnet, everything will be able to be seen live, so I think those fans will be well served.”

The new sports: The 12 new events, which include luge relay, snowboard slopestyle and ski half pipe, will definitely get a lot of air time — and it doesn’t hurt that Canadians have a good chance at doing well in most of them.

The routine for many of us will be to wake up like we did on Thursday to find out that Maxence Parrot and Sebastien Toutant finished first and third in the qualifying for men’s slopestyle — while pre-Games medal favourite Mark McMorris finished seventh in his heat — and decide if the highlights are enough, or if we want to actually watch the full event online or when it re-airs in prime time. Either way, it looks as though viewers will have plenty of choice.

Who might break through to Canadians? All of CBC’s big guns are there, but Irwin says that Andrew Chang and Andi Petrillo, who are stickhandling hosting duties for the live overnight shifts, are two who might emerge with higher profiles after these Games.

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